Black and grey neo-traditional tattoo of a multi-armed goddess in a jewelled crown, holding objects including a crescent, a dagger and a skull, across the chest.

Multi-armed goddess across the chest

Neo-trad · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A multi-armed female figure with a jewelled headdress, third eye and draped jewellery sits at the centre of the chest, with her arms extending outwards holding a crescent, a dagger, a skull and other objects. The linework is fine and the figure is shaded with smooth grey gradients, with bold black bands visible across the upper chest and shoulders. The design is set in black and grey throughout and is framed symmetrically by the outstretched arms.

Neo-trad Chest Crown Crescent moon Dagger Skull Jewellery Third eye

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The apples had been dropping since Lammas, and by the last week of August my grandmother had stopped pretending the Bramleys were for eating. We gathered them in the dark, before the wasps woke, and carried them up the slope to the old well house where the goddess was painted on the wall. Nan called her the Night Hand. She had six arms, or eight when the light was bad, and each one held something the orchard needed: a crescent for cutting back the dead wood, a dagger for the nests under the eaves, a little skull for the wormy windfalls.

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Then the surveyor came up from Reading with his clipboard and his pegs. He walked the rows without looking at the trees, tapping the bark with a biro as if counting the years they had left. He stopped at the well house, gave the painted goddess a long look, and said the wall would make a nice feature in the car park. Nan said nothing. She put the kettle on and set out three cups, though only two of us drank.

That night the wind came up from the west and the orchard rattled like a box of teeth. In the morning the surveyor's pegs had gone from the grass. I found them stacked in the well house, squared off neat as firewood, each one with a windfall skewered on its point. Beneath them the goddess's third eye, which had been shut since before my mother was born, stood open and wet with dew.

Nan didn't gloat. She lifted the crescent hook from its nail, climbed the ladder, and started cutting out the dead wood the surveyor had marked in red. 'She only takes what's asked,' she said, not looking down. The car park plans went back to Reading that week, and the apples kept falling, sweet and ungathered, for anyone who wanted them.